#3 - Construction work & the first children to school!
It’s already been a few months ago since we last wrote a blog post. On Instagram and Facebook we are more active, but we will write a longer update here now and then. The last time we wrote about the first week with the (malnourished) twins. We are thankful that they recovered well in the last few months. They are used to coming to us and they feel safe. Unfortunately, the situation with their mother is a bit more difficult. The twins are often with us during the day, while the mother goes away. But the mothers are actually supposed to care for their children themselves. With the baby everything is fine, she is already more than half a year old, she smiles and she is also able to sit. So in the end, the breastfeeding turned out well. The baby is always with the mother or other family, so she doesn’t leave her with us. At home they live in a bad an unhygienic environment, so we are thinking about how we can help them with that. Because it also causes the children to fall sick more often. Since they are now healthy enough, they don’t have a special diet anymore, but they just eat what everyone else eats. The reason they are still coming to us, is because we don’t want to let them go like this. We first want to see if we can improve the mother’s situation. We would have loved to send the girls to a pre-school, but they don’t have one in this area. But with us they already learn a few things, because we have a worker who does educational activities with them. So at least they are learning some English, coloring, how to hold a pencil, numbers, games, songs etc.
A few months ago, we met another set of twins, two boys. They were 9 months old, but very malnourished and sick. They were in our program for a short time, but sadly we couldn’t help them anymore. It seemed like the mother has a mental disability herself. After a while, she wouldn’t come daily anymore and after that she stopped coming. The father seemed promising, because he came with her the first time and he was involved. But unfortunately it didn’t end well. It´s sad, because we know the children don’t have a good home. But to help children, we need motivated parents/relatives. Sometimes people misuse organizations and go to multiple at the same time, sell the food or use it for themselves. Unfortunately, that is the reality here.
Besides helping malnourished children, we also want to help children by sending them to school. In Karamoja there is a lot of illiteracy, only 3 out of 10 people above 10 years old is able to read or write (2020 Uganda National Household Survey). For example, I noticed that when the man who we employed as a guard/gardener, told us he isn’t able to read or write. It was surreal to me, because it is so normal for us to read and write. A lot of children don’t go to school, so that’s why we want to make it possible for them to go to school, through sponsors. This makes a big difference in their lives. Currently, we can share the good news that from Monday, 3 girls are going to school for the first time in their lives. They are 3 sisters (8, 6 and 5 years old) and the last months they have been on our compound a lot. They also get some lessons already, to prepare them well. Their father passed away and their mother has a hard time providing the basic needs for her children. These girls will go to school and also have dinner at our place. On Instagram you will soon be able to see more about their first day of school. We are very grateful that we are able to do this, thanks to a sponsor and some other monthly donations! We hope that many more children will be able to go to school. If you’re interested in helping a child, you can leave a message for us. It directly makes an impact in a child’s life and their future!
This year we handed out Christmas packages for the first time! It was beautiful to see how happy the families were. It touched us to visit two older women. The first woman was laying on a mat outside of her hut, alone. She told us that all her children live somewhere else in the country. The neighbours are the ones who help her. When she saw the package, she immediately raised her hands up to thank God (you can see it on the video on Instagram). Besides that, we also visited an older woman who is blind. She lives on a beautiful location with a view on Mount Kadam, but unfortunately she can’t see that. She was laying alone in her hut and she gets help from family who live opposite of her road. When she got the package, she felt with her hands to know what was inside. After that, she also wanted to pray with us. It touched us and made us think. In the future we would like to do something to help these lonely, elderly people.
Lastly, we want to give an update concerning building. The last time we showed that we were building a foundation for three rooms, of which one will be an office. Meanwhile the foundation is finished and all the walls are built. The building of that place is currently on hold, because it all costs a lot of money. But at the moment we are building a new kitchen area. Until now we were cooking in a small clay house, but that was old, small and because of the open fire it had a lot of smoke inside. We are now building a bigger space. In the middle there will be a space to work on, the stove will be tiled and besides that, the smoke will go outside through a pipe, so it’s more comfortable to cook there. Last time we wrote that building costs a lot of money, and that’s still something we are struggling with. When the building is finished, our costs will go down quite a bit, but we still need to do a lot. We are grateful for all the support we can get. It also helps us if you share our website/social media with others, so our reach will grow.
Thank you for reading this update!
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